See the FAQ in the Square Foot Gardening forum for good tips on how to lay out your raised garden bed. Your tomatoes are probaby going to need at least a 2x2 foot square each. So if you want 4 then that will take up one entire half of your bed. (they'll need to be staked or caged for support.) Then you have the other half of the bed for green beans. You'll want to plant bush beans if you don't have any support for them, and I'd probably plant out that entire side in beans. Depends somewhat on how many beans you want at a time. I just hate to go to the trouble and wind up with just a handful. If you want herbs, they grow great in containers! Or you could get creative and plant your herbs in with your regular landscaping.

Best of luck!
Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Square Foot Gardening Forum

If you can only have one raised bed, you could grow your tomatoes and beans in containers and leave room for the herbs, letuce, etc.

We built several raised beds this year but will continue growing tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, bush squash and peppers in containers - about 15 gal for toms, 12 gal for eggplant and 10 gal for peppers. This may seems large (or small to some) but I get great harvests when growing in these size pots.

We are using the beds for onions, shallots, leeks, beets, broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, lettuce, turnips and herbs.

A yard of soil mix will be more than enough for a 8'x10x10" bed.

I agree with Susan that using the Sq. Foot Gardening layouts will let you get the most out of the limited space. Pole beans will give you more than bush beans and take up less space. Depending on where you are located it may be too late to plant the peas and putting the cucumber in a large container will give you more space for the beans and tomatoes.

It gets a good amount of sunlight from about 2pm or 3pm on for the rest of the day.

But that limited amount of sun is going to be your biggest problem. Is there a way to increase the sun exposure?

Dave

But that limited amount of sun is going to be your biggest problem.

True. You might want to grow cherry tomatoes rather than full-sized ones, and space the plants about 50% farther apart than Square Foot recommends. That will give their foliage more room to bring in light (= food), and also reduce the fungal problems that are likelier with less light.

Thanks everyone. Really great suggestions. Is 5 or 6 hours direct sunlight a day not enough for tomatoes? Maybe this is more of what was causing my problems last year rather than the soil.

Does anyone have experience growing the Italian flat string beans? Also, the idea of planting in pots sounds good as well. Maybe if I have leftover soil I will get some potted plants going as well.

I grow romano type beans: the flat italian type and I prefer the climbers over the bush variety. They are far more abundant.
You need good sun exposure, and make sure when you put in some supports that you add the support to the side of the bed which will NOT shade out the rest of the vegetables: North Side.
Where are you located geographically. In the South we can get away with 6 hours of sun and get decent tomatoes. However this is normally aimed at morning to mid-day sun. If we only had late, hot hot sun I think we'd have much less harvest. There would be less flowering in heat for many types of tomatoes.
So when you are thinking about laying out the garden and the placement you need to combine sun hours and consider heat hours in some climates. Consider orientation of the garden bed (it's better to put the narrow side to the north if you can unless you are in a climate where you want things to throw some shade over other crops). Also water, make sure you can get water to the bed!

When I did the tomatoes last year, they kept flowering, but then the flowers would shrivel up and die - not producing any fruit. I wrote it off to the crazy heat we had (up North) last year. There were many spans of heat where it never went below 80-90 degrees for days at a time.

Is 5 or 6 hours direct sunlight a day not enough for tomatoes? Maybe this is more of what was causing my problems last year rather than the soil.

That would depend on the type of problems you had.

Normally 6 hours of high quality sun light (9am - 3pm)
would be ok, not ideal, but ok. But given the times you listed you are missing out on the most intense, full spectrum part of the day. Even on the equinox in mid-June, unless you are living near the equator (we really need to know your location or at least your gardening zone), you will only be getting 4 hours of normal intensity, full-spectrum sunlight. The rest of the time it will be much weaker.

Maybe if I have leftover soil I will get some potted plants going as well.

Container plants are best grown in a soil-less potting mix, not garden soil.

Plan on this year being one of experimentation and learning. Take good notes so that next year you'll have a much better picture of what and how much can be grown in your space. And also use the time to explore options for increasing the sun exposure, especially the morning sun or other possible locations for the garden.

Good luck.

Dave

I've been told that morning sun is better than afternoon sun. I suspect you'd have better results if your bed got sun from 6 am to noon than from noon to 6pm. (Using two extremes as an example.)

That said I've had plenty of plants grow without optimal sun. It's just that they don't do as well as they might, and are not as proctive as they could be.